PGHwrites: Free Association Reading Series with Faith Barrett, Jessica Lanay, Frank Lehner & Joy Priest

The Free Association Reading Series, founded by Pat Hart and Mark Nieson, showcases local writers sharing newly written work and works-in-progress. This month’s reading spotlights writers Faith Barrett, Jessica Lanay, Frank Lehner, and Joy Priest.

“Free Association readings began in 2016 for established and emerging writers of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction,” explains Pat. “As the name implies, Free Association is not affiliated with a university or writing program but is for all, for established and emerging writers of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction.”

Pat was inspired to start this series after watching a low-quality recording of a Flannery O’Connor reading on YouTube. “You couldn’t even really see Flannery, but the audience reaction was gripping; they laughed with her when it was funny, and they went dead silent at the horror. It was such a powerful experience for the audience and for her as well,” said Pat.

Pat is no stranger to the fact that writing can be very isolating. She knows how hard it is to tell what works and what doesn’t. With Flannery O’Connor’s reading in mind, the Free Association Reading Series seemed like the natural choice to help bring community—and fun—back into writing.

About the Writers:

Faith Barrett is Associate Professor of English at Duquesne University, where she teaches courses in American literature and creative writing. She has published a scholarly book on American Civil War poetry and coedited an anthology of Civil War poetry. Her current scholarly project centers on African American poetry written between 1830 and 1850, focusing on how these writers use arresting images of natural environments to call for civil rights for Black Americans. Her poems have appeared in Fourth River, the Denver Quarterly, and New American Writing. She also has a chapbook entitled Invisible Axis from Etherdome Press. She is currently working on a sequence of poems that explore the impacts of industrial toxins on human health; another series in progress uses the language of ornithology to represent the conservation challenges faced by various bird species.

Jessica Lanay is an interdisciplinary writer originally from Key West, Florida and is now based in Baltimore, Maryland. Jessica’s debut poetry collection, amphibian, won the 2020 Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Prize from Broadside Lotus Press, and she is currently completing her doctoral degree in Art History. Jessica has worked with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra on poetry and short-film script commissions, held an artist-and-scholar residency at Loyola University Chicago, and written librettos for excerpted productions of operas. Her art writing can be found in BOMB Magazine and ArtReview; she’s also contributed essays to art publications such as White Shoes: Nona Faustine from MACK Books, Fantasy American from The Andy Warhol Museum, and Black Women As/And The Living Archive from Washington Project for the Arts. Her creative work and personal essays can be found in literary journals such as Common, Salt Hill Journal, Electric Literature, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, [PANK], Black Warrior Review, The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review, and other outlets. They most recently published a personal essay titled “I Am Not Antigone: Notes on Losing My Brother” in The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review, and her translations and poetry were included in the 2024 University of Arizona Press anthology When Language Broke Open: An Anthology of Queer and Trans Black Writers of Latin American Descent.

Frank Lehner is a writer, educator, award-winning book designer, and executive coach whose work explores storytelling’s power to shape experience and community. He has taught at the University of Pittsburgh, Duquesne University, and for President Obama’s Young African Leaders Initiative. His community focus is on guiding youth and young adults to develop and apply their stories that serve to create believable lives rich with meaning, passion, and purpose. Deeply rooted in the urban pastoral of Pittsburgh, Frank’s work finds grace, grit, and humor in the characters—human and otherwise—and wonder within. His poetry appears in diverse periodicals, and his plays have been staged in Pittsburgh and New York City. He holds a master’s in psychology from Duquesne University. His poetry collection, Mrs. Nussbaum’s Monkey, is from Bottom Dog Press (2025). Frank and Jamie Lee Curtis, oddly enough, share the same SAT score.

Joy Priest is the author of Horsepower (Pitt Poetry Series, 2020), winner of the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, and the editor of Once a City Said: A Louisville Poets Anthology (Sarabande, 2023). She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Fine Arts Work Center fellowship, and the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from the American Poetry Review. Her poems, essays, and cultural criticism have appeared in The Atlantic, Boston Review, The New Republic, and Sewanee Review, among others. Priest is on the faculty of the University of Pittsburgh’s MFA in Creative Writing program and serves as the Curator of Community Programs & Practice at Pitt’s Center for African American Poetry & Poetics (CAAPP). Her second poetry collection, The Black Outside, is forthcoming from Duke University Press in 2027.

About Your Visit: 

The in-house restaurant, Cucina Alfabeto, is open for dinner from 5 to 10 p.m. Please visit OpenTable or call 412-435-1111 to make a reservation.